Findings Flashcards
Learn the main findings from key studies in the field
Costa Dias (2020)
The gender pay gap in the UK: children and experience in work
UK
Last 30 years
Fertility
Experience
Labour supply
Empirical wage model
Impact on women’s pay of additional experience
‘Simulate two counterfactual scenarios’ where women work full-time, or are just as likely to be in full/part-time jobs as men
‘Up to 2/3’ pay gap for graduates 20y after first child born attributed to ‘differences in working experience’, especially full-time work
1/3 ‘overall long-term gender wage gap’ without degree explained by differences in experience
Goldin (2014)
Change job market, ‘esp how jobs are structured and remunerated to enhace temporal flexibility’
Firms shouldn’t have ‘incentive[s] to disproportionately reward’ workers according to their schedules
[Freakonomics] Schools should open longer hours with fewer holidays
‘Corporate, financial, legal’ sectors must catch up with ‘technology, science, health’
‘Government intervention’ may be unnecessary
Charles & Guryan (2011)
Studying Discrimination: Fundamental Challenges & Recent Progress
Racial prejudice
Market forces
Equilibrium
‘[M]ost racially prejudiced’ white workers ‘sort[ed] […] away from the objects of their prejudice’ by ‘market forces’
Black workers’ ‘equilibrium’ welfare depends on ‘most-prejudiced white’ worker they come into contact with
Aigner and Cain (1977)
‘Discrimination arises if employers find it easier to assess the productivity of minority group and are risk averse’ [slides]
‘Skills endogenously determined’ [slides]
Lundberg and Startz (1983)
‘Minority workers obtain fewer skills despite having equal innate ability and identical costs of acquiring skills and are accordingly paid less’ [slides]
‘Skills endogenously determined’ [slides]
Holt (2008)
Statistical discrimination can arise ‘without bias’, creating a vicious ‘cycle of low expectations and low achievement’
Neal & Johnson (1996)
The role of pre-market factors in black-white wage differences
Productivity
Skills
‘Parsimoniously specified wage equation’
End-of-high school test
WAGE GAP MAINLY DUE TO SKILLS GAP
‘[…]this one test score explains all of the black-white wage gap for young women and much of the gap for young men’
Gap due to ‘family background’ and ‘school environments’
‘[…]research should focus on the obstacles black children face in acquiring productive skill’
Cahuc et al (2014)
Discrimination still exists after controlling for ‘premarket factors’
Skills - AFQT scores
Education - years of schooling
Wage equation
Selection bias
Neal and Johnson (1996)
Lang and Manove (2011)
Neumark et al (1996)
Sex discrimination in restaurant hiring: An audit study
Women 35% less likely to be invited to interview, and 40% less likely to receive an offer at high-price restaurant
Audit study Philadelphia, US Customer vs hiring discrimination Statistical discrimination Identical CVs (with name and sex changed) given to high- and low-price restaurants
Bertrand & Mullainathan (2004)
Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination
Correspondence study
Boston & Chicago
4 categories: sales, admin support, clerical services, customer services
High & low quality CVs
Name frequency on birth certificates
*‘White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews.’
*‘Callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for White names than for African-American ones.’
‘The racial gap is uniform across occupation, industry, and employer size.’
‘We also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names.’
Carlsson et al (2014)
Does the design of correspondence studies influence the measurement of discrimination?
*Correspondence studies are limited by HS critique
*Perceived variance of groups can influence employer decisions even when taste-based discrimination is not present
Heckman & Siegelman (1993)
Variance
HS critique
Correspondence studies
Graphical representation
Bertrand & Duflo (2016)
Field Experiments on Discrimination
Review of audit & correspondence studies
‘Highlight[ing] key gaps in the literature and ripe opportunities for future field work.’
Edelman et al (2017)
Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment
Airbnb
Field experiment
*Customers with African-American names were accepted 16% less often than those with white names.
*Discrimination could be reduced by auditing hosts, or making names and photos less visible.
Doleac & Stein (2013)
The Visible Hand: Race and Online Market Outcomes
Craigslist
*13% lower sales rate for African-Americans and 17% lower for tattooed white than non-tattooed white sellers
*10% lower price for African-American and tattooed white than non-tattoed white sellers
*Less positive response to delivery proposal for tattooed white and African-American sellers
Rates and bids higher in markets with greater competition, or concentration of African-Americans, and lower in markets experiencing racial segregation or high crime rates
Examining offer rates and bids allow D&C greater insight into extent of discrimination
Limitations:
Sample - Craiglist users (online classified ads)
Ethics
Research design - taste-based or statistical?
Levitt (2004)
Testing Theories of Discrimination: Evidence from Weakest Link
Natural experiment
*No discrimination against female or black contestants; statistical against Hispanic
Limitations: artificial environment, revenge, voting based on predicting how others will vote, increased incentives to hide prejudice on national platform
